Intelligence Revolution
— The Human Concerto Crescendo
I think the century from 2000–2100 will become regarded as the crescendo to our human revolution concerto — including the three movements of the adagio agricultural and the allegro of industrial and crescendo of intelligence.
In another sense the ‘intelligence explosion’ is the main act in the modern human story, the closing scene to the opening up that fire brought to our collective experience and position in the food chain.
Our analogue dominance will be over and a new mixed matter canvas will form the fabric of reality both of intelligence and experience much of which we already enjoy and endure now, our position in which remains unauthored.
Inspired this Sunday morning by Johan Rockstrom great and broad account of the climate boundary story so far, I found myself reaching for a graph I cannot find which plots the three important pillars in the story of our millenial generation — the first half of the unfolding intelligence revolution.
It seems in this intelligence revolution, which is eating out our ‘work’ from the middle that the challenge lies in our ability to affect the lines of climate and refugees.
I think that thankfully our intelligence curve is hitting its big moment first then climate might approach its tipping points (2030ish) and then by 2035 refugee — mass migration moment could approach its most chaotic.
The intelligence explosion represents a drastic risk as might lead off in a plethora of un-useful outcomes however it seems to be arriving at a possibly useful time and with appropriate imaginable scale to change outcomes on other inter-dependant, important lines of climate and refugees.
Even if we apply intelligence and governance well to scale climate solutions and make it cheaper for the markets to have a regenerative relationship with nature than an extractive one. The lag is likely to generate uninsurable damages to homes for over 1 billion people thus generating huge amounts of unrest for most other people.
The greatest challenge I think we face collectively in my working life (next 25 years) is how to imagine ourselves beyond the nation state paradigm to allow people who are moving to feel well located in new places in this unchosen nomadic lifestyle.
When we are well located we feel safe, we belong, we think collectively and open mindedly, we are creative and loving. we have rich stories to tell, we move, we sing, we dance. For these feelings we need rights and access to finance, food, land and health and education designed for our flow and flourishing.
If we don’t manage to put our new found intelligence to work on climate and then new more liquid global governance then we could be in a world of trouble 2035–40 EVEN IF we manage to steer intelligence and then climate in the right directions… so worth some of us trying to keep imagining this up.
We cannot control the outcomes but we could see good work as the ability to try to help the intelligence revolution stay positively correlated with the outcomes we seek across the other threads of our generation
If anyone wants to help me build a v2 of the graph above with some numbers and references I would be most grateful — email hello@daveerasmus.com
Thanks
